on laughed carelessly.

"You're an impressionable young thing, Hapgood."

"Am I?" grunted Roger. "Just the same, I know a fine-looking woman
when I clap my bright eyes on her. And I'd like to camp on her trail
as long as the sun shines! Say"--his voice half losing its eternal
drawl--"who do you suppose she is? Her old man might own about a
million acres of this God-forsaken country. If she goes on through to
'Frisco--"

"You wouldn't be strong for stopping off out here?" the fat man put in
genially. Hapgood shuddered.

And to Greek Conniston there came a sudden inspiration.

"Anyway," Roger Hapgood went on in his customary drawl, "I'm going to
find out. It's little Roger to learn something about the prairie
flower. I'll soon tell you who she is," he added, rising from his
seat.

But he never did. For one thing, young Conniston was not there when
Roger returned five minutes later, and it is extremely doubtful if
Roger Hapgood would have told how his venture had fared. Being duly
impressed with the fascination of his own debonair little person, and
having the imagination of a cow, he had smirked his way to the girl,
who now sat in the observation-car, and had begun on the weather.

"Dreadfully warm in this desert country, isn't it?" he said, with
over-politeness and the smile which he knew to be irresistible.

The girl turned from gazing out the window, and her eyes met his, very
clear and very much amused.

"Very warm," she smiled back at him. Even then he had a faint fear
that she was not so much smiling as laughing. "The surprising thing is
how well things keep, is it not?"

"Ah--yes," he murmured, not entirely confident, and still dropping
into a chair at her side. "You mean--"

"How fresh some things keep!"

Roger Hapgood's pink little face went violently red.

"I say!" he began. "I didn't mean any offense. I thought--"

"Oh, that's all right," she laughed, gaily. "No offense whatever. Will
you please open that window for me?"

His face became normally pink again as he hastened to throw up the
window in front of her. His eyelid fluttered downward as he met the
regard of a couple of men facing them. Then he came back to her side.

"Thank you," she smiled sweetly up at him. And she held out her hand.

He didn't know what she wanted to do that for, but had a confused idea
that in the free and easy spirit of the West she was going to shake
hands. The next thing which he realized clearly was that she